Imperator sperat bellum mox finem habiturum esse.

The sentence has two parts:

• Imperator sperat = The commander/general hopes
• bellum mox finem habiturum esse = that the war will soon come to an end

This second part is an indirect statement, a very common Latin construction after verbs like say, think, know, hope, and so on.

So the pattern is:

• main verb: sperat
• indirect statement: bellum ... habiturum esse

Because in Latin, the subject of an indirect statement goes into the accusative, not the nominative.

So after sperat, instead of saying something like that the war..., Latin uses:

• bellum = the subject of the indirect statement, but in the accusative
• habiturum esse = the infinitive verb

This is called the accusative-and-infinitive construction.

A useful comparison:

• direct statement: Bellum mox finem habebit = The war will soon end / will soon have an end
• indirect statement: Imperator sperat bellum mox finem habiturum esse = The commander hopes that the war will soon end

Also, bellum is a neuter noun, and in neuter nouns the nominative and accusative singular have the same form. So even though it looks like nominative, here it is functioning as accusative.

Habiturum esse is the future active infinitive of habeo.

It is formed like this:

• future participle: habiturus, -a, -um
• plus esse

So:

• habiturum esse = to be going to have / to be about to have

In this sentence, it means that the war will have an end in the future.

Because the subject of the infinitive is bellum, the participle is in the accusative singular neuter: habiturum.

Latin normally forms the future active infinitive with:

• the future participle
• plus esse

So habiturum by itself is just a participle, meaning something like about to have or going to have.
To make it into the infinitive needed in indirect statement, Latin adds esse:

• habiturum esse = to be going to have

So yes, habiturum carries the future idea, but esse is still needed to complete the infinitive form.

Literally, finem habere means to have an end.

In smoother English, that becomes:

• to come to an end
• to end

So bellum mox finem habiturum esse literally means:

• that the war will soon have an end

But idiomatically it means:

• that the war will soon end

This is a good example of Latin using a phrase that is slightly more literal than the most natural English translation.

In sense, it clearly goes with bellum, because the meaning is the war will soon have an end.

Grammatically, bellum is the subject of the infinitive phrase, and finem is the direct object of habiturum esse.

So the relationships are:

• bellum = the thing that will have an end
• finem = the end that it will have

One detail that can be confusing: habiturum looks the same in the masculine accusative singular and the neuter accusative singular. So the form itself does not visibly distinguish between agreeing with bellum or finem. You understand it from the syntax and meaning of the sentence.

It expresses an action that is future relative to the main verb.

• sperat = he hopes
• bellum ... habiturum esse = that the war will soon end / will be about to end

So from the point of view of the hoping, the ending of the war is still in the future.

That is exactly why Latin uses the future infinitive here.

Because Latin usually does not use a separate word equivalent to English that in this kind of sentence.

English says:

• The commander hopes that the war will soon end.

Latin often prefers:

• The commander hopes the war soon to be going to end

That literal English sounds strange, but it reflects the Latin pattern: accusative + infinitive instead of that + finite verb.

So the idea of that is built into the construction itself, not expressed by a separate word.

Mox means soon. It modifies the idea of habiturum esse:

• bellum mox finem habiturum esse = that the war will soon have an end

Latin word order is flexible, so mox could often appear in a different position without changing the core meaning. Its place here is perfectly natural, but it is not fixed in the way English word order often is.

Not necessarily. In many Latin texts, especially earlier ones, imperator means commander or general.

So in this sentence, imperator is best understood as:

• the commander
• the general

It is the nominative singular subject of sperat.

In later historical contexts, especially under the Roman Empire, imperator can also be associated with emperor, but that meaning depends on context.